Internet Speeds?

Question

I am on BT Broadband and my Internet connection is so..... slow. No matter what time of day or night. I have deleted temp files, cleaned up, defragmented, disabled some of Multimedia i.e. not show pictures and still I could write a book wating for my next search to appear - Please can someone help or do I need to invest in a new computer? Patience is not one of my virtues so I am chomping at the bit now - any ideas????

Answer 1

Is this wireless or wired? How fast is yout ethernet card? 54mbps? 108mbps? You'll experience slow speeds with a 54mbps card. How fast are you downloads? How old is your router? More details. You may need to simply update your routers and ethernet cards. It might also be your service provider with slow speeds.

Email me with specifics and i'll help you out more.

~Shoe

Answer 2

First, do you have a wireless connection? If so, I suspect you did not implement security and freeloaders are using you access without your knowledge. Shut off the wireless at the wireless access point and use a cat 5 cable connection to the router.

Download the latest upgrade to your virus protection and do a system scan. Make sure you clean up any problems.

Run a speed test. Go to www.pcpitstop.com and do their upload and download tests. Make sure you are the only one on line. See if the tests show speeds near what they are supposed to be. Speed tests give you a measured speed value which is a lot more definitive and helpful.

If the speeds are less than what they should be, remove the router, connect the pc directly to the modem; reboot modem and pc and measure again. This will tell you if the router is the problem. If the speed is still markedly slower than its rated capacity contact your ISP as there may be a problem there.

Software, virus protections, firewalls, etc often halt downloads until they clear that the intended download is OK. This will make the connection appear slow. In fact it is a security issue that you have to live with.

Many servers that feed downloads are throttled back by the server's configuration. This is done to provide feeds to many users at once rather than have people wait in queue for their download and it also allows them to accomodate faster and slower connections. Perhaps there is no problem on your end. This is another reason for the speed check.

Answer 3

Start off by doing a spped test of your broadband connection (link below) to find out if you're getting a good rate. If you're not then talk to BT about it. If you are then additional memory in your PC will improve your surfing performance:)

Answer 4

right, try these, don't know if they'll help, but I suppose anything is worth a shot.........

1) Check your computer over using the tools @ http://pcpitstop.com/pcpitstop/default.asp

2) Download SPYBOT:SEARCH & DESTROY from http://www.safer-networking.org
Or......... download the latest version of ZONEALARM free firewall from http://www.zonelabs.com/ as with it comes a free 15-day trial of "ZONEALARM INTERNET SECURITY SUITE" with in addition to the famous Firewall software includes Anti-Virus + Anti-Spyware tools (and was top rated PC security package by WHICH? magazine earlier this year)

3) If you're still using Microsoft Internet Explorer, try switching to MOZILLA FIREFOX as your main browser instead....... as back in December I had rather alot of bad luck with computers, which mean't reverting to my 2nd TOSHIBA 220CS laptop (133MHz Pentium1 processor, only just upgraded to 80MB RAM) which was still running IE4 (which is next to useless with the modern internet) and had to revert to dial-up as well..... after a few days I was able to download FIREFOX onto my USB Flashdrive on the PC at my Grandma's house, and install it on my laptop when I got home..... the change it made was pretty dramatic.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

4) Try GOOGLE's "Web Accelerator" software.... the only software of it's kind I know that doesn't also install spyware/adware on your PC
http://webaccelerator.google.com/

5) If all this fails, try switching to PIPEX instead
http://broadbandnews.pipex.com/pipex/getbroadband

You don't say what your PC's specs are, but last I heard the minimum spec you need these days for going online is a 1.2GHz processor

Answer 5

Am with bt and my Internet is fast but i only stay about 100 yards from the exchange so it could be that you live quite far away from the exchange that's causing the problem

Answer 6

What actual speed are you on? If you are on a dial up, (52kb) then it will be quicker to go to the library to get the information you need.
However, if you are on a 512kb speed or higher, then your computer's processor is not fast enough.

Don't use Talk Talk, their service is bad and when you need help they expect you to call on a premium rate number and hang for a long time to wait for someone to help.

Answer 7

It is possible you have addware or malware. I would check this 1st, is you PC generally running slow.

Can you log into you router, if so what speed is it connected at.

Are you using the BT Broadband software, if so remove it, it's crap. This is not needed, I removed many a moon ago.

Answer 8

No no no no no, dont use talk talk, if you are having problems now using them will only make things much worse!!
This might be an obvious question but have you checked for Spyware/virus?
Maybe check your startup programs too, there maybe something running in the background using your bandwidth

Answer 9

Check you speed and it is fine, check this info:

You could have a bunch of addwares, spywares

check Spyware doctor 5

www.download.com

also, You may have a unconfigurated browser

check Tuneup 2007 or system mechanics

(they optimize your browsers (especially : Explorer and Firefox) )


and get Mozilla Firefox , it's fast and safe

Answer 10

Have you actually checked your broad band speed? Or called your service provider? I'm 2,900 feet from my provider but my speed dropped very low. Turned out i had a very small short in on of my phones!